Healing the Divide Begins Within

…not a house with family members divided, not a church with members divided, not a nation with citizens divided, nor a person with a divided and conflicted mind. This blog is in response to the question for May’s Synchroblog, “How Do We Heal the Divide?” You can see the responses of others listed below, beginning April 23. One of my newest favorite quotes was shared by synchroblogger, Glenn Hager. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller Look at telephones today compared to thirty years ago — or typewriters, or televisions, etc. Progress is about change. Yes, there’s always resistance to change. People become conditioned and comfortable with what is around them today. But when a new reality proves itself better than the old, people make the choice to climb onboard. Building unity is progress toward the kingdom of God, and in the church as well as the nation and world, we need to come up with a better model that proves that it can help people become more loving, joyful, generous, kind, patient, faithful, hopeful, and disciplined. That will be true progress. Progress happens more quickly—not by attacking what is, but through designing a better model that outperforms the old. To fight an existing reality inspires defensiveness and convincing a defensive person to change is like one of the three most difficult things in life to do. My father said the three most difficult things to do in life are: to kiss a girl who’s leaning away from you; to climb a fence that’s leaning toward you; and to open a closed mind. To fight someone else’s belief system, whether it’s right or wrong, closes their ears. I’m reminded of the Passion story we read last week. The temple guards were taking Jesus by force. Peter lashed out with his sword and cut off the ear of one of the servant of the high priest. When you fight someone’s conditioning, you force them into a position of defending their conditioning and you cut off their ears to listening to anything you have to say. Heal a divide doesn’t happen by arguing about differences that are based in conditioning. You have to understand your own conditioning before you can recognize the conditioning of others that makes them respond to new things. Jesus said, “Take the log out of your own eye” before you start trying to fix others. Healing the divide is another way of saying—“bringing in the kingdom of heaven.” In my new book that will be released on Amazon on May 12 (In Living Color: Heaven), I explain how the kingdom of heaven is the development of unity and harmony in the world today. That’s why Jesus said the kingdom is “at hand”, i.e., now. You will become a seed for the kingdom when you focus on taking the log out of your own eye—building the kingdom of peace and harmony God on the inside first. “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). A place of peace, joy, hope, love, goodness, kindness, patience, faithfulness, and self-control must exist within you in abundance before it can spill out into the world and bring change in the world. This is one of those both/and things. Yes, we need to work on harmony in our external worlds, but it must flow naturally. I think Jesus meant examine yourself and the improvements you need to make on yourself when he said, “Seek first the kingdom of God/heaven and the rest will be added to you.” Work on finding harmony within yourself, and then you will have the maturity and patience to help others find unity in their lives. Changing the world begins with you (and me). Don’t worry about what others need to do. You build a better model of you first. Growing (maturing) into the kingdom is a full time job in and of itself. So how do you do that? How do you find peace, harmony, and unity within? For me, it took place when I started the practice of centering prayer. Through the mystical process of willingly placing yourself on the Potter’s wheel and saying, “Here I am, Lord. You have twenty minutes of my time today (and every day). Do what you will. I may not understand what you are doing, it may think it’s a waste of time, but here I am.” That’s when and where the pieces of the kingdom within will begin to fall into place. Truth will reveal itself. The conflicting voices within you will begin to harmonize. And the world around you will start to become a beautiful place, no matter what division exists around you. First build a new model of you – peaceful, hopeful, encouraging, positive, united in love for all things God has made. Heal the divide within. Then the peace that is abundant within you will spill over. And the kingdom of harmony within will overflow to all.

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Here’s the list of other bloggers contributing posts related to healing the divides this month: